Linearly Ordered Plugins through Self-Organization

Abstract

Nowadays, plugin-based applications are quite common. Eclipse is probably the most popular example of such an application. By means of plugins, end-users can add or remove functionality even at runtime. Besides the kernel, plugin-based applications can be kept very small and nearly everything can be designed as a plugin. However, if plugins are added at runtime, their ordering is difficult to organize. This can be observed for graphical user interface representations of plugins, such as menu or list items for example. In particular, the kernel may not refer to a single concrete plugin, since it has to be independent of concrete plugins-according to the plugin concept. Therefore, self-organization is proposed in the present paper as a solution to structure plugin-based applications. A pattern for linearly ordered plugins is presented. The end-user still retains the possibility to reorder the plugins manually according to his preferences. A sample application of the presented pattern in the context of graphical user interfaces is described.

Status Sensitive Components: Adapting Rich Internet Applications to Their Runtime Context

“…In a former publication, we presented the idea of self organzing plugins in plugin based architectures and internet portals ( [2], [3]). The presented SSC pattern picks up the idea of self-organization basically, but this aspect can be expanded broadly.…”

“…Self-organizing navigation structures and their use in internet portals are disussed in [2] and [3]. These structures offer mechanisms to personalize menu structures for the current user.…”

Self-Adaptable Discovery and Composition of Services Based on the Semantic CompAA Approach

“…Most often, components and architectural description languages (ADL) are used to manage adaptation at a structural level (e.g., the proposition of Fractal (Bruneton et al, 2006) and its extension toward adaptability (Safran) (David & Ledoux, 2006), the proposition of the JavaPod platform within the Sirac project (Bruneton & Riveill, 2001), works around the Madcar model (Grondin et al, 2006) or plugin approaches (Bako et al, 2006;Tu et al, 1998). We observe that the flexibility of the adaptation of these approaches is not obvious, far from it.…”

Software Service with a Plug-in Architecture for Text Readability Assessment

“…Developed service for assessing the readability of the text is based on a plug-in architecture [ [17]- [22]]. This solution allows one to add to the service new readability metrics in the form of separate plug-ins (Fig.…”